Piracy - right or wrong?

The pirates have been caught and sentenced, pending appeal naturally. We're not talking about the seafaring pirates off Somalia though. This time it's a bunch of Swedes involved in the act of piracy. According to Wikipedia "Piracy is a war-like act committed by a nonstate actor, especially robbery or criminal violence committed at sea, on a river, or sometimes on shore". Well sorry guys but if you're going to get involved in illegal file sharing and hope to get away with it then perhaps you should have chosen a less incriminating name?

The “Pirate Bay” founders have been sentenced to a year in jail and a £2.5m fine. The appeal result will be interesting and there is clearly some support from the illegal downloaders who seem to believe that it is their right to download copyright material. Some view it as "sticking it to the man". Although certain downloaders believe that they are only hurting big industry and fat cat artists such as Madonna and Robbie the reality is that the huge majority of composers, performers, music labels and producers are talented artists who are not top of, or concerned with, pop charts.

The majority of people in the music business manage to make a living, certainly not a fortune but enough for it to serve as a career. The rise of illegal downloading has hit smaller musicians and music labels hard. Legitimate sites such as iTunes and eMusic are just as easy to use but the ubiquity of pirate downloading sites means that some feel that if there are so many doing it it must be OK. Of course it isn't and as I said at the beginning the clue is in the name. If you prefer not to be involved with pirates and care about the musicians, big or small, then legitimate CDs or downloads are your fair options.

PRS Again

You can rely on the PRS to let down the music business. With musicians struggling just as much as everyone else in the credit crunch PRS have failed again to see reality.

Their latest failure to engineer a deal with YouTube is regrettable. PRS say they argue the case of the songwriters but once again fail to disclose which artists would be covered by a new deal with YouTube.

One reason that PRS won't disclose who will benefit from a new deal with YouTube is that apart from the PRS fat cats earning £400,000 a year the main beneficiaries will be the multi-millionaire artists whose videos will be most played on YouTube while the smaller musicians will see little.

Unfortunately all PRS will succeed in doing, in their aggressive approach with YouTube, is further drive people to piracy sending them to illegitimate video and music websites.

The Performing Rights Society (PRS)

The Performing Rights Society (PRS) are up to their old tricks again, calling small businesses with menaces and demanding payment for playing the radio as it is “providing entertainment”. Royalties should be paid to composers and songwriters and we should all accept and agree with this. However should we pay the composers and songwriters twice? After all when you listen to the music the radio station has already paid PRS for the performance, so why should you and everyone else where the radio can be heard by more than one person at a time? If you listen to CDs or legal downloads then the royalty has been paid in the purchase price of the disk or download.

 

PRS paid its top fat cat a salary of £425,000 in 2007, so before you think that perhaps the small time musician is entitled to a second bite of the cherry remember that much of the money collected goes to PRS salaries and admin costs.

 

If you have a small business and want to avoid paying PRS then you have options. Either play the radio for personal use only, ensuring that no-one else can hear it, or play PRS free music. Older classical music or music from companies such as Global Journey (the company I work for) sell music that it not registered with PRS. Play their music, even as in-store music for entertainment and you're in the clear. Don't forget that if you've got music on hold PRS will seek you out for that too, so change your hold music to royalty free music too!